Review of: 'Frans Hals in America' (2022)
August 2023
JOHN BEZOLD
Review of: Dennis P. Weller, Frans Hals in America. Collectors, scholars and connoisseurs, Newcastle Upon Tyne [Cambridge scholars publishing] 2022
As Walter Liedtke elucidated in his 2004 article ‘The study of Dutch art in America’, the research concerning seventeenth-century Dutch painting in the USA differs from that in the Netherlands for several reasons: the archives of Dutch museums, the guilds of St. Luke and the biographical information on painters (such as baptism, marriage and death documents) all tend to reside on Dutch (or Belgian) soil.1 Consequently, the study of Dutch art in North and South America by scholars and curators there, often takes a more theoretical tone, by focusing on individual paintings and reading into them, meaning that may or may not be present, often buttressed by the aid of seventeenth-century art theory. As Dennis P. Weller summates and repeatedly comments on within his publication Frans Hals in America. Collectors, scholars and connoisseurs, it is very rare for an American art museum to focus entirely on Dutch paintings, if at all. Perhaps the only American museum that comes close, is the Taft Museum of Art in Cincinnati (fig. 1) – about half of whose collection of paintings is made up of seventeenth-century Dutch art.2 Accordingly, when discussing paintings by Frans Hals (1582/3-1666) that have, at some point in time, found their way to North or South America, such artworks are often isolated from Hals’ other paintings, with Halses often held up as museums’ ‘trophy’ works. Notable exceptions to this are the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the National Gallery of Art, The Frick Collection and the Yale University Art Gallery, which have many highlights.
When thinking about the paintings by Frans Hals that have left Europe and travelled abroad, the connoisseur that most often comes to mind is William Valentiner (1880-1958),3 as do the many publications and exhibitions that he created, or helped to organise, on the famed Dutch painter. Valentiner held numerous museum positions in the USA, such as at the LACMA, the Detroit Institute of Art, and most notably, the North Carolina Museum of Art, where he was curator of Northern European Art for more than 20 years. It is this last role that Valentiner had in common with Weller, who is currently curator emeritus at that museum. Weller’s new book on Hals is the result of over 20 years of studying the artist and Valentiner.4 Therefore, quite literally, no one else could have written this book from such a standpoint and with such ready access, over many years, to Valentiner’s papers and connoisseur-related archives, which are kept at the North Carolina Museum of Art.
Weller’s book opens with a short introduction that serves to explain Valentiner’s role within Hals historiography, and briefly discusses his background as a German emigrant to the USA. Weller also explains that his publication is intended to update Valentiner’s 1936 book on the artist: Frans Hals Paintings in America, which only discusses Hals’ paintings then in the USA.5 While it is indeed an update of that book, it does not follow its format, as Weller’s is focused on the narrative of the many Hals paintings that have made their way to both North and South America, rather than just collect the known Halses in the United States of America, as Valentiner did. So, within the context of this review, and Weller’s book, America means either of its two continents. Even as Weller demarcates his book with this framing, due to his own background, and the fact that most Halses in America are indeed in the USA, the book is heavily focused on ‘USA’ Halses, and mostly on the East Coast. Unlike Valentiner’s handsome tome, Weller’s publication under review, while hardback, is hardly handsome. The paper stock is like that found in a quotidian copy machine and there are no full bleed images to be found. Excluding its hardback – and British publisher – its form, feels like a master’s thesis.
In the back of the book, there is an abridged catalogue of paintings by Hals in America as conceived by Weller, which lists: autograph works by Hals currently in North and South American art collections (72); “autographed works by Hals no longer in America, whose current locations are unknown after having been previously documented on American soil”, and in some instances, with attributions to Hals that remain problematic (22); and seemingly somewhat arbitrarily, a third section of Hals paintings, “whose attributions to Hals remains somewhat problematic (8).6 Their current whereabouts are divided between American and non-American collections.”7 As Weller is not explicit in his Hals catalogue, and unless one digs deeper into the (as Weller names them) “limited” references, readers are left to wonder (and conclude), doubts concerning these Hals attributions are his own and those of others.
Cover of: Frans Hals in America: Collectors, scholars connoisseurs
Middle left: fig. 1 Frans Hals, Portrait of Michiel de Wael, 1625, 121 x 95.8, Taft Museum of Art, Cincinnati, Ohio, inv. 1931.45O
Middle right: fig. 2 Frans Hals, Portrait of a gentleman, half-length, in a black coat, oil on canvas, 77.7 x 66 cm., private collection
Right: fig. 3 Frans Hals, Portrait of a gentleman in white, c. 1637, oil on canvas, 68.7 x 59.1 cm., Legion of Honor, San Francisco, inv. 75.2.5
This is a book of numbers, names and transactions – as in the literal prices paid for paintings on the part of collectors, by private individuals or public institutions. All the usual suspects will be found: Frick, Mellon, Widener, Duveen, Taft, Knoedler, Morgan, Grimm and Slive. Much of the focus at the beginning of the book concerns Valentiner’s trans-Atlantic biography and his role in the transference of Dutch old master connoisseurship from Northern Europe to the USA in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. While it does not cover new terrain, it does sketch a portrait of Valentiner’s character in the context of Hals studies. It even considers Valentiner’s well-studied connoisseurial training under the tutelage of Wilhelm von Bode (1845-1929) prior to WWI. Notably, countless dubious paintings attributed to Frans Hals – by Valentiner, but also many others – found their way to America.8
As mentioned before, chapter one, ‘A forgotten master on the world stage’, serves to further introduce the reader to Valentiner. Weller discusses Hals’ mid-nineteenth century resurgence, and, like most authors writing on Hals since the 1970s, he rehashes Frances Susman Jowell’s foundational article on Théophile Thoré-Bürger (1807-1869), and her essay in the 1989 Hals exhibition catalogue, outlining Frans Hals’ growing popularity.9 It offers little that will be new to Hals scholars, though it serves to ground the casual reader. The second chapter zooms in on the period of 1860s and onward, in the USA. It is also the longest and most interesting for Hals specialists, and casual readers. Titled ‘The golden age of Hals in America, 1880-1914’, it discusses the changing landscape of the USA’s bustling market for old masters, concluding with WWI, and how that period saw the levying of heft taxes on artworks imported to the USA from Europe. Weller further elaborates on how exorbitantly wealthy USA collectors were able to stash their collections in the UK, thus subverting such a tax. He also explains how North American collectors in this period dealt with the situation, which dampened their collecting activities, and how legal headwinds imposed by the US government affected ‘Gilded Age’ collectors – who at the time, were concluding their most intensive buying period. It is the fierce competition occurring between dealers to secure Halses for Americans, and the increasing sophistication on the part of collectors, scholars, and curators, which makes reading this chapter so enthralling. It is also the chapter with the newest amount of research, on the part of Weller, seen from an American/USA scholarly perspective, which treads previously unresearched terrain, at such depth, in Hals studies.
Chapter three, ‘Buyer Beware’, is perhaps the one that is most suited for scholars to further Weller’s research, considering Hals’ paintings from a physical-object view. Cleverly, he makes use of the so-called ‘fisher-children’ genre works by Hals to structure the chapter.10 Seeing artworks as objects, mainly entails focusing on them as financial assets, on the part of collectors, as a scholar. The chapter examines misattributions to Hals, mostly by Valentiner and Hofstede de Groot, as authored by them in their catalogues of the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century. The chapter then discusses the Halses that were brought to America as paintings by Hals, innocuously or not; and how they transferred ownership within the USA. Or for instance, how they were de-attributed while still in prominent American collections. It then explains how many such paintings, once deattributed to Hals, slipped into oblivion and have not been seen or heard of since. In short, Weller makes clear, that many paintings once attributed to Hals are ‘missing’, most likely to remain so. Figuring out which Halses are real, and which are not, is also a newer field within Hals studies, ripe for future development by researchers, and this subject deserves more attention. Surprising as it may be, Weller notes that one-third of the paintings currently considered as autograph, are in USA.11 He also hints that such a study could even adopt the same framework used by him, and only study the ‘American’ fisher-children, more in-depth. To those unfamiliar with this grouping of works by Hals, they have always formed their own clustering of works by the artist – with countless attribution issues – and were last studied in-depth in the 1970s.12
Chapter four, 'Hals collecting and scholarship between the wars’, delves into the burgeoning market that developed for Hals’ works already in America during this period. It recounts some of the lesser-known tales behind works even the non-Hals specialists know from Hals’ oeuvre: such as Elizabeth Taylor’s acquisition of Portrait of a gentleman, half-length, in a black coat (fig. 2); and another work, Portrait of a gentleman in white (fig. 3), now in the San Francisco Museums of Fine Art’s Legion of Honor; and how, exactly, Portrait of Issac Massa, hanging at the Ontario Museum of Art, came into that Canadian collection.13 Chapter five, ‘Easy come easy go’, discusses Hals paintings that were purchased by American collectors and how they then left the USA for other countries within America (again, North and South). Never before this publication, has a Frans Hals scholar discussed, in an isolated manner – as the focus of a single book – works by Hals which were once in American collections and then returned to Europe. It is a very novel subject in Hals studies, worth examining. Such as the family portrait in the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, in Madrid (which is also, the largest painting on canvas by Hals), and the Portrait of a sitting officer (fig. 4), which now finds itself in São Paulo, alongside several other works that once resided in American collections that are now ‘back’ in Europe.14 The chapter concludes with WWII, and how, even with increasing awareness and access to expert old master knowledge on the part of collectors and public alike, Hals’ artworks, dubious or not, still commanded high prices on the art market.
Chapter six, ‘Hals in America after World War II’, is largely focused on the research on Hals created since the 1970s, with once again Slive taking prominence over Grimm, as is common within Hals historiography during this period. Mainly due to the Anglo-Saxon orientation of Western European art history scholars at that time. Weller notes that Slive, “reset the bar on Hals studies within his three-volume catalogue on Hals’ paintings starting in the 1970s.”15 Weller continues, stating “it should be emphasised that his vision of Hals’ oeuvre has far more reason [than] ones set forth earlier by Valentiner and Bode. Slive’s count of extant works numbered 222 in 1974. Valentiner… expanded the number of autograph Hals pictures to more than 300 in 1923, with many more discoveries yet to be made.”16 Weller also explains how Grimm, in his 1972 catalogue, accepted 145 works as being by Hals. Further, he goes on to state that during this period, Hals’ works less frequently found their way to the USA than in prior decades; a consequence of the number of Halses in private collections and museums and therefore not available on the art market. Finally, Weller discusses some of the more recent paintings by Hals to have been acquired by museums in the USA, over the past three decades, and the prices that were – for instance, even for the 1990s – exorbitant. Such as the 1999 acquisition by the Cleveland Museum of Art of the Thielman Roosterman portrait (fig. 5), which sold for $2.8 million, and the $2.9 million paid by the Getty Museum in Los Angeles, for Hals’ John the evangelist. Yet another painting by Hals mentioned, in detail, is the now titled, Van Campen family portrait in a landscape, purchased due to the major efforts undertaken by Larry Nichols, who is curator emeritus at the Toledo Museum of Art.17
It is clear in his writing that Weller has an affection for Slive’s version of Hals, over Grimm’s; something he is not alone in, when it comes to American curators and scholars of Dutch art that came of age in the 1980s and 1990s. In this chapter’s footnotes, showing further signs of the current time, Weller notes the two works by Hals that were in the Museum of Western Art in Odessa, Ukraine, whose current whereabouts are unknown due to the ongoing war instigated by Russia, in February 2022.18 This book also makes clear that Weller has an affection for the work of Walter Liedtke, and he explains their crossing paths, as a student in Cleveland, during graduate school. He ends the chapter by discussing the Toledo family portrait, in its currently known totality, and again notes its fragment that was once in another American collection: the painting of a boy from the Van Campen family portrait in a landscape, which was once in the Kimball Museum of Art in Texas, and, for some time, has been in a private collection in Brussels.19 Weller continues chapter six by stating that in the late twentieth century, the focus on collecting Halses shifted toward quality rather than quantity. He further explains this is in part due to increasing access to knowledge about Hals and his work, which was once mostly housed within museums, and the minds of their curators, independent art dealers and connoisseurs. Thus, with the opening up of such information to the public due to the internet from the late-1990s onward, quality is sought after, rather than number of works. Left unsaid is that Hals only painted so many paintings, and as time goes on, the number of them that are ‘locked away’ in museum collections will grow, meaning there will be less Hals paintings available on the art market. It is rare that Hals works are deaccessioned. But there are several instances of it occurring: such as the Kimball fragment, and one from Maine’s Portland Museum of Art, which deaccessioned Portrait of a fisherman holding a beer keg (fig. 6), prior to its auctioning by Sotheby’s in January of 2020.20
Left: fig. 4 Frans Hals, Portrait of a sitting officer, 1631, oil on canvas, 82 x 66 x 2cm., São Paulo, Brasil, inv. MASP.00187
Middle left: fig. 5 Frans Hals, Portrait of Tieleman Roosterman, 1634, oil on canvas, 117 x 87 cm., Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio, inv. 1999.173
Middle right: fig. 6 Frans Hals, Portrait of a fisherman holding a beer keg, 83.82 x 67.31, Private collection
Right: fig. 7. Frans Hals, Maria Pietersdochter Olycan, 1638, oil on canvas, 83.5 x 68.5 x 2 cm., São Paulo, Brasil, inv. MASP.00187
Expanding on the Portrait of a fisherman holding a beer keg, and its uncertain attribution, it is worth noting that throughout the book under review, Weller makes many references to a ‘Hals workshop’, often stating of it that, for example, many auction houses have labelled a painting ‘by’ him – such as Hals and workshop.21 It must also be stated that many Dutch art scholars, including Weller, have endorsed a seemingly endless plethora of names of Haarlem painters as having possibly been active in some way in Hals’ workshop, which should only be considered speculation, as their over-confident pronouncements are all too often made based on formal analysis alone.22 And therefore, any of the many proposed pupils from Frans Hals’ workshop, based on formal analysis and nothing further, will require lengthy exercises in connoisseurship, in the tradition of Bredius, Bode, Grimm, or Slive, to have weighted merit. Without such elaborate reasonings, such pronouncements by scholars and curators, of ‘pupils’ active within ‘Hals workshop’, therefore, remain entirely speculative.
As of summer 2023, there exist only three primary documents that have been discovered since Hals’ lifetime, explicitly stating the names of Hals’ pupils. Two of them are claims filed to Haarlem’s Guild of St. Luke by Judith Leyster (1609-1660), stating Hals lured away her pupil without having registered him as such: Willem Woutersz. His birth and death dates, and works, are all unknown.23 From the documents Leyster filed, known for certain is that Woutersz. was Hals’ pupil sometime before September/October 1635, because these are the months in which the two documents she served to the Haarlem guild, were officiated. The other document points to a pupil – who, unlike Woutersz. – is named in both primary and secondary literature: Hals’ son-in-law, the artist Pieter Gerritsz van Roestraten (1630-1700). He is a well-known and well-documented pupil of Hals, and was a still life painter, and an occasional landscapist, who happened to marry Frans Hals’ daughter Adriaentje in 1654, before they moved to England, after 1 May 1663.24 Pieter testified on 6 October 1651 – together with Claes Hals (1628-1686), one of Hals’ 14 children – that he lived in the Hals family household for five years.25 However, it remains unknown if he collaborated in the workshop by adding to, copying or varying on paintings by Frans Hals, or what he learned from him. When an auction house, a museum or an old master dealer attributes a painting to Hals, and his workshop, today, it remains impossible, to identify any individual pupil’s name, and certainly not parts of paintings they painted, because the detailed knowledge to be able to do so, has yet to be created by scholars of Hals and artists in his direct orbit.
Regarding the documented pupils in secondary literature – from the seventeenth- and eighteenth centuries – seven people have been named as having been pupils of Hals. They are: Adriaen Brouwer (1605-1638), Dirck van Delen (1604/5-1671),26 Philips Wouwerman (1619-1668),27 Isaac van Ostade (1621-1649),28 Adriaen van Ostade (1610-1685),29 Vincent Laurensz van der Vinne (1628-1702),30 and Pieter Gerritsz van Roestraeten.31 Van der Vinne is known to have been Hals’ pupil, from documents left behind, by Van der Vinne’s brother.32 Hals did not register Willem Woutersz as a pupil with Haarlem’s Guild of St. Luke, even as Hals was its 'vinder' in 1644.33 (It seems he had no issue training pupils in any sort of unofficial capacity.) This excursion about limited knowledge of pupils in Frans Hals’ workshop demonstrates that Weller’s references to a Hals workshop, are quite vague and underdeveloped.34 For a book focused on collecting Halses from the 1860s and onwards – when attributions of paintings to Hals crescendoed in number, with thanks to Bode and Valentiner – this matters indeed. However, to be fair, lack of archival knowledge about Hals’ workshop production and pupils is a serious problem that affects almost all Hals scholarship and is not easy to solve. Although that is certainly no reason to perpetuate the inherent, inherited vagueness.
In his concluding chapter, Weller presents a discussion of a Hals forgery from the early-2010s. Even though this relatively recent case is well-publicised, this is the first time it is discussed in a book about Frans Hals. It concerns a painting published in the Burlington magazine as a rediscovered Hals, authored by curators from both the Mauritshuis and Louvre.35 A few years after its sale, it came to light that the portrait was a modern forgery, and part of a larger $250 million forgery scheme, which sent shock waves through the world of old master connoisseurship. The collector paid $11 million for the work and later settled with Sotheby’s. To summarise, Weller notes that both this and other false Halses, and other recent ‘transplant Halses’ to America, share similar research questions to their earlier arrived counterparts. Which is: to what degree has the artistic landscape really changed during the last century and a half, since paintings by Frans Hals trickled their way into the consciousness of savvy collectors in Europe, and then America, who were eager to learn about his biography and oeuvre; because, as Weller observes in his conclusion: “Individuals and museums are still willing to pay small fortunes for his paintings, scholars continue to make new discoveries of his paintings, and connoisseurship remains an inexact science.”36 This ensures that Weller’s book will need to be updated in a few decades from now.
To illustrate the fine line of the still shifting boundaries of Frans Hals’ oeuvre, beyond Slive and Grimm, Weller notes a portrait of Willem van Huythuysen, which is currently in an private collection in the USA (hence its inclusion in the book).37 It was sold for $14 million and dismissed previously, by both Slive and Grimm. Weller explains that (North) American buyers, as a totality – in the twenty-first century – no longer dominate the market for Hals’ paintings. As an example, he notes another, rarely cited or studied work by Hals: the enigmatic Young woman holding a flagon. It was, for some time, on long-term loan to the Frans Hals Museum; the painting, in my opinion, being one of the most peculiar works by Hals. It came to auction in 2012, shortly before the Corcoran Gallery of Art’s closure, which resulted in yet another work by Hals heading back to Europe, after scholars had already deemed, to be an 'American Hals', which has now been ‘lost’, to Europe. It is this parsing of nuance in the use of language of ownership of Halses that borders on the chauvinistic. Even while the opposite could be said of the ever-ongoing Dutch quest to ‘repatriate’ artworks to the Netherlands.38
In concluding the book, Weller states that scholars can expect to encounter few changes to his narrative of Hals in America, and that for now and in future decades, “visitors to museums and private collections across America will continue to be afforded the opportunity to marvel at Hals’ masterful paintings.”39 Weller points out the narrative of Hals in North and South America, could have ended with the Van Campen family portrait, but, that that does not seem to be the case.40 Shortly after the Toledo museum’s 2011 Hals family portrait acquisition, Elizabeth Taylor’s Portrait of a gentleman, half-length, in a black coat was sold as attributed to Hals, even as it was once not attributed to Hals, by Slive.41 This again, shows more openness to now breaking through the canon set forth by Slive in his 1970s and 1989 catalogues, and his follow-up monograph in 2014.42 To follow, Weller notes a painting in the collection of the Van Otterloos, and how the attribution of it to Hals, is up for debate.43 The painting in question is: Portrait of a young man holding his gloves and wearing a tall hat; is it a Frans Hals, or is it not?44 With each year since Slive’s death, Slive’s version of Frans Hals keeps slowly giving way, to Grimm’s version. This swinging of the pendulum in Hals studies will be strengthened by Grimm’s upcoming Frans Hals catalogue.45
Weller very often, within paragraphs, cites commentary authored by others about a painting that he is discussing, without stating who exactly said it. This leaves the reader wondering about the author and the type of publication he is referencing. The end result is that the scholarly weight of the author being quoted is left unstated. Therefore, readers of this book are very often forced to look at the back of the book, in the bibliography, to find the name of the person Weller has quoted. That makes this smoothly written, well-researched book, a staccatoed reading experience, when reading with a keen interest in the topic. Weller also quips that the attributions of Dutch old master paintings, beyond Rembrandt van Rijn (1606-1669), rarely attract great interest from the public, which is indeed true. Lastly, Weller does his best to include the Halses outside of the USA, but this is somewhat underdeveloped. However, it is really no fault of his own, as there are only a handful of Hals’ paintings in (public) collections in North and South America (fig. 7), beyond the many now in the USA. Notably, those in Canada,46 Brazil,47 and Mexico.48
Looking forward, there are high hopes that when the findings are made widely available, Anna Tummer’s collaborative, highly technically advanced research into laying new groundwork for Hals connoisseurship (using detailed 3D dimensional scanning and then, 3D rendering methods that literally map the curvatures of the brushstroke ridges on canvases, for instance), with its many new methods and technologies, are holistically incorporated in future Hals connoisseurship.49 This may take the personally reasoned yet inexact science of intuition, to one of universally accepted precision that merges the best of both types of connoisseurship. Esther Pasztory, a renowned art theoretician, once wrote, “The presence of the past in the present acts as a great force of stability and continuity.”50 Therefore, to conclude, no matter how far future connoisseurship of Hals advances in its technical brilliance, the writings of Grimm, Slive, Valentiner, Hofstede de Groot, Bode and Bredius – alongside the work of several other Hals connoisseurs – remains foundational to Hals studies. Without their pioneering biographical work on the artist, and the cataloguing of his work throughout the last few centuries, such a well-written book on Hals as Dennis P. Weller’s, would never have been possible to write.
John Bezold
PhD Candidate
University of Amsterdam
1 W. Liedtke, ‘The study of Dutch at in America’, Artibus et historiae 21, no. 41 (2000), pp. 207-212. “It may be a corollary that American scholarship of Dutch art rarely reveals the tenacity and depth of Dutch academic studies... To place this academic efflorescence in a broader context one must consider the history of collecting in America and our appreciation (especially in the nineteenth century) of values we presumed to share with the Dutch. The first wave of collecting Dutch art in America was part of a more general response to European culture after the American Revolution (1776-1783), especially from about 1800 to 1830... long exposure to Dutch and American art and to the ideals they were said to embody, made it almost inevitable that the great American collectors of the 'Gilded Age' (c. 1877-1915) favo[u]red Dutch paintings as did their forebearers, although there was a shift to big names (Rembrandt, Hals, Vermeer, Ruisdael, Hobbema, Cuy and a few others who had been admired in England for some time).”
2 Liedtke authored a catalogue of the Taft Museum of Art’s collection of paintings in 1995. A little-known fact about the Taft pendants, is that they are rather worn and damaged and have been very heavily restored: W. Liedtke, The Taft Museum. European and American paintings, New York City 1995, pp. 142-144. See also: D. Weller, Frans Hals in America. Collectors, connoisseurs, and curators, Newcastle upon Tyne 2022, pp. 64-66. R. Lodge (Acting Chief Conservator, Intermuseum Laboratory, Oberlin College, Oberlin, Ohio), Letter to Dr. Ruth Meyer (Former Taft Museum Director), 24 Aug. 1987 (Available in the curatorial files for the Hals pendants). A conservation report from 1987 states: “There are many more holes in the original canvas of the Young Man than in that of the Young Woman. Two areas of the paint film of the Young Woman have been blistered and wrinkled by the heat and moisture of the lining process.”
3 For a memorial biography of Valentiner, see: E. P. Richardson, 'William R. Valentiner', College art journal 18, no. 3 (1959), p. 247. Weller notes in his 2022 publication, in the first footnote to the introduction, the nuances around the spelling of Valentiner’s name, regarding the original German spelling of Wilhelm: D. Weller 2022 (note 2), p. 199n1. See also: D. Weller, 'Old Masters in the New World: the Hudson-Fulton exhibition and its legacy, in A. Stott, J. Goodfriend and B. Schmidt (eds.), Going Dutch: the Dutch presence in America 1609-2009, Leiden 2008, pp. 237-265.
4 Weller, for those following his scholarship, has been slowly publishing bits and pieces over the past few years, of some of the materials that would eventually constitute the book under review. See, for example: D. Weller, ‘The passionate eye of William R. Valentiner: Shaping the canon of Dutch painting in America’, in Holland’s golden age in America: Collecting the art of Rembrandt, Vermeer and Hals, E. Quodbach (ed.), University Park 2014, pp. 140-153. D. Weller, ‘Frans Hals in America. Another embarrassment of riches’, Journal of the historians of Netherlandish art 9, no. 1 (Winter 2017), DOI: 10.5092/jhna.2017.9.1.5.
5 W. Valentiner, Frans Hals paintings in America, Westport 1936, pp. V-X. For a contemporaneous review of that publication, see: G. D. Gratama, 'Frans Hals paintings in America by W. R. Valentiner', Burlington magazine 71, no. 412 (1937), pp. 48-49. “In this excellently produced book some 105 pictures by Frans Hals in the possession of American collections and museums in the United States [emphasis my own] are illustrated… This book, together with Dr. Valentiner’s Frans Hals in the ‘Klasskier der Kunst’ series, published in 1921, and the elaborate catalogue of 50 paintings by the Haarlem artist in private and public collections in the United States, which were exhibited in the Detroit Institute of Arts in 1935, constitutes a very complete corpus of Hals’ works.” See further: W. Valentiner, An exhibition of fifty paintings by Frans Hals at the Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit 1935. E. P. Richardson, ‘A bibliography of the writings of William R. Valentiner from 1903-1940’, Bulletin of the Detroit Institute of Arts of the City of Detroit 19, no. 8, part 2 (May 1940), pp. 91-111.
6 Weller 2022, p. 256-257.
7 Weller 2022, pp. 267.
8 C. Scallen, Rembrandt, reputation and the practice of connoisseurship, Amsterdam 2004.
9 F. S. Jowell, ‘Thoré-Bürger and the revival of Frans Hals', Art bulletin 56 (1974), pp. 101-117. F. S. Jowell, ‘The rediscovery of Frans Hals’, in Frans Hals, S. Slive (ed.), London 1989, pp. 61-86.
10 Weller 2022, p. 93. “One could even make the case that the fisher children paintings are the largest single remaining hurdle in the field of Frans Hals studies.” See also: pp. 93-103, 96, 151, 153, 197. A too-infrequently cited book, on the part of Hals scholars (excluding Weller in his 2022 publication under review), is a dissertation that extensively deals with Hals’ many children's portraits, genre works and fisher-children of Hals, is: C. Stukenbrock, Frans Hals, Fröhliche Kinder, Musikanten und Zecher, Frankfurt am Main 1993.
11 Weller 2022, p. 78. Interestingly, given the span of time between 1936 and 2022; Valentiner wrote the same, in the introduction of his 1936 publication: W. Valentiner 1936 (note 5), p. 1.
12 S. Koslow, ‘Frans Hals’s fisherboys: Exemplars of idleness’, Art bulletin 57, no. 3 (1975), pp. 418-432.
13 Weller 2022, pp. 123-132.
14 Weller 2022, p. 146-148.
15 Weller 2022, p. 163.
16 Weller 2022, p. 163.
17 L. W. Nichols, L. De Belie and P. Biesboer, Frans Hals portraits: A family reunion, Brussels 2018. For a review of the publication, see: See also: J. Bezold, ‘Review of: Frans Hals portraits: A family reunion', Oud Holland Reviews, December 2020. https://oudholland.rkd.nl/index.php/reviews/44-review-of-frans-hals-portraits-a-family-reunion
18 Weller 2022, p. 201n403.
19 Weller 2022, pp. 184-188.
20 ‘Portrait of a fisherman holding a beer jug', Sotheby's, 30 Jan 2020. https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/auction/2019/master-paintings-sculpture-day-sale/frans-hals-and-studio-portrait-of-a-fisherman. Weller 2022, p. 217n 319, 320. Weller mistakenly states the sale was in 2019.
21 See, for example: Weller 2022, p. 25, 46, 96, 98, 100-101, 148, 151.
22 See for instance: D. Weller (ed.), Jan Miense Molenaer: Painter of the golden age, Raleigh 2002, pp. 4, 10-11. D. Weller, ‘Jan Miense Molenaer (c. 1609/1610-1886): The life and art of a seventeenth-century Dutch painter’, (PhD diss., University of Maryland, 1992), p. 11. W. von Bode and A. Bredius, ‘Der Haarlemer Maler Johannes Molenaer in Amsterdam’, Jahrbuch der Königlich Preussischen Kunstsammlungen 11 no. 2 (1890), p. 70. A. Bredius, ‘Jan Miense Molenaer: Nieuwe gegevens omtrent zijn leven en zijn werk’, Oud Holland 26 no. 1 (1908), p. 42. J. Briels, Vlaamse schilders en de dageraad van Hollands gouden eeuw 1585-1630, Antwerp (1997), p. 334. A. Tummers, Judith Leyster: de eerste vrouw die meesterschilder wereld. Haarlem 2009, p. 30. F. Duparc, ‘Philips Wouwerman: 1619-1668’, Oud Holland 107, no. 3 (1997), p. 282. F. Duparc, Philips Wouwerman 1619-1668, Zwolle 2009, p. 18. P. Biesboer and J. A. Welu, Judith Leyster: A Dutch master and her world, Zwolle 1993, p. 235.
23 I. van Thiel-Stroman, ‘The Frans Hals documents. Written and printed sources, 1582–1679’, in Frans Hals, ed. S. Slive, London 1989, documents 70 & 71.
24 Van Thiel-Stroman 1989 (note 20), document 148. Adriaentje’s birth and death dates are currently unknown. Weller incorrectly states that four of Hals’ sons became painters, naming only Jan (1620-1654) and Harmen (1611-1669) and omitting: Frans II (1618-1669), Reynier (1627-1672), and Claes. Weller 2022, p. 14. See further: I. van Thiel-Stroman, ‘Frans Franchoisz Hals’, in Painting in Haarlem 1500–1850. The collection of the Frans Hals Museum, Köhler (et al.), Haarlem 2006, pp. 179, 182n38. See also: J. Bezold, Frans Hals’ forgotten family and the lost art of connoisseurship, Research MA thesis University of Amsterdam 2017. Lastly, a simple sweep of both of Van Thiel-Stroman’s publications cited in this endnote, together with a glance of the following publication would have mended this error before the book went to publication: J. Grimmer, Das Hals-Familie und Ihre Zeit, Vienna 1972, pp. 99-134. Weller also authored a small publication about Hals and his son Jan as painters, to accompany a small exhibition he ideated and produced, covering only Jan Hals and his father, Frans: D. Weller, Like father, like son, Raleigh 2000.
25 Van Thiel-Stroman 1989, document 138. If he lived there for this duration in short range from that date (realistically dating this period, no further back in time than 1644/5), Roestraten was just 14 or 15 when he entered the household. Van Thiel-Stroman 2006 (note 24), pp. 179-183.
26 Houbraken, here, has misinterpreted De Bie’s reference to Hals on the same page that mentioned Wouwerman, just a sentence before. De Bie names Wouwerman a pupil of Hals. Houbraken wrongly assumed that Van Delen was, too. A. Houbraken, De groote schouburgh der Nederlantsche konstschilders en schilderessen, volume 1, Amsterdam 1718, p. 309. J. C. Weyerman, De levens-beschryvingen der Nederlandsche konst-schilders en konst-schilderessen, volume 1, The Hague 1729, p. 356. A. Houbraken, De groote schouburgh der Nederlantsche konstschilders en schilderessen, volume 3, The Hague 1753, p. 309.
27 C. de Bie, Het Gulden Cabinet vande edele vry Schilder-Const, Ontsloten door den lanck ghewenschten Vrede tusschen de twee machtighe Croonen van Spaignien en Vrancryck, waer-inne begrepen is den ontsterffelijcken loff vande vermaerste constminnende geesten ende schilders van deze eeuw, hier inne meest naer het leven af-gebeldt, verciert met veel vermakelijcke rijmen ende spreucken, Antwerp 1661, p. 356.
28 Houbraken 1718 (note 26), pp. 347-348. J. C. Weyerman, De levens-beschryvingen der Nederlandsche konst-schilders en konst-schilderessen, volume 2, The Hague 1729, pp. 91-92. Houbraken, De groote schouburgh der Nederlantsche konstschilders en schilderessen, volume 2, The Hague 1753, p. 210. J. B Descamps, La Vie des Peintres Flamands, Allemands et Hollandois, avec des portraits gravés en Tailledouce, une indication de leurs principaux Ouvrages, & des réflexions sur leurs différentes manieres, volume 2, Paris 1754, pp. 173-174.
29 Houbraken 1718, pp. 347-348. Weyerman 1729 (note 28), pp. 91-92. Descamps 1754 (note 28), pp. 173-174.
30 A. Houbraken, De groote schouburgh der Nederlantsche konstschilders en schilderessen, volume 2, Amsterdam 1719, p. 210. Weyerman 1729, pp. 260-261. J.Descamps 1754 (note 28), p. 410.
31 Houbraken 1719 (note 30), p. 192. Weyerman 1729 (note 26), pp. 244-245. Houbraken The Hague 1753 (note 26), p. 191.
32 “Geslagt-Register van Van der Vinne welks Aantekening eerst is Gedaan door Laurens vader Vinne. Op het Berigt hem gedaan door zijn Vader en Oomens, alsmede het geen hij uit oude Geschriften heeft Nagespeurd”, Noord-Hollands Archief, Haarlem.
33 H. Miedema, De archiefbescheiden van het St. Lucasgilde te Haarlem 1497-1798, Alphen aan den Rijn 1980, pp. 606-608, 612.
34 See notes 21-22.
35 Q. Buvelot and B. Ducos, ‘A rediscovered portrait by Frans Hals’, Burlington magazine 156 (Feb. 2014), pp. 431-438. Slive also endorsed the attribution to Hals: S. Slive, Frans Hals, London 2014, p. 353.
36 Weller 2022, p. 196. W. Valentiner 1936 (note 5), p. 1. “The fame of Frans Hals is of recent date.”
37 Weller 2022, pp. 196-197.
38 W. van Zeil, ‘Nederland koopt voor 175 miljoen een Rembrandt. Heeft het Rijks echt een vaandeldrager nodig?’, de Volkskrant, 8 Dec. 2021. https://www.volkskrant.nl/columns-opinie/nederland-koopt-voor-175-miljoen-een-rembrandt-heeft-het-rijks-echt-een-vaandeldrager-nodig~b4a54804/?referrer=. See also: D. Boffey, 'Dutch purchase of Rembrandt work criticised over tax haven link', Guardian, 19 Jan. 2022. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jan/19/dutch-purchase-of-rembrandt-work-criticised-over-tax-haven-link
39 Weller 2022, p. 196.
40 Weller 2022, pp. 184-187.
41 Weller 2022, pp. 188-189.
42 S. Slive, Frans Hals, 3 volumes, London and New York 1970-1974. Slive 2014 (note 35).
43 For an overview of the Van Otterloo's collection see: F. Duparc, Golden: Dutch and Flemish masterworks from the Rose-Marie and Eijk Van Otterloo collection, New Haven 2011.
44 Weller 2022, p. 195.
45 Grimm’s new catalouge on Frans Hals is set to be published in 2024 by the RKD. 'RKD study over Frans Hals in voorbereiding', 9 Mar. 2022, RKD. https://rkd.nl/en/about-the-rkd/coming-soon/news/1173-rkd-study-about-frans-hals-in-preparation.
46 Weller 2022, pp. 82, 132, 141.
47 Weller 2022, pp. 39-41, 146.
48 Weller 2022, p. 190.
49 A. Tummers, A. Wallert, K. Kleinert, B. Hartwieg, C. Laurenze-Landsberg, J. Dik, R. Groves, A. Anisimov, V. Papadakis and R. Erdmann, ‘Supplementing the eye: the technical analysis of Frans Hals’s painting–I’, Burlington magazine 161 (Nov. 2019), pp. 934-941. A. Tummers, A. Wallert and N. De Keyser, ‘Supplementing the eye: the technical analysis of Frans Hals’s paintings–II’, Burlington magazine 161 (Dec. 2019), pp. 996-1003.
50 E. Pasztory, Thinking with things, Austin 2005, p. 78.
CITE AS:
John Bezold, 'Review of: Frans Hals in America. Collectors, scholars and connoisseurs', Oud Holland Reviews, August 2023.